Futures Up Slightly; Tesla, Quicksilver Seeing Big Gains

By Sam Mamudi

Futures for the leading indexes are up a slight fraction this Easter Monday morning, ahead of a week’s trading that starts with both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Standard & Poor’s 500 index at record highs.

Shares of Tesla Motors (TSLA) are having a busy morning, with the stock up more than 12% after the company reported good news:

Tesla Motors says its electric sedan sales have exceeded the guidance it laid out two months ago and it expects to show a profit in the first quarter, a big victory for small high-tech automaker…

Tesla says it is scoring both on sales and production. It made 4,750 cars in the first quarter and none will languished on sales lots. All are destined for customers who already have placed orders for one. The output was 250 cars more than Tesla had promised in a February letter to shareholders laying out its first-quarter guidance.

Also on the rise are shares of Quicksilver Resources (KWK), up 20% after it announced on Friday a $485 million sale of 25% of its Barnett Shale oil and gas assets to Tokyo Gas. Quicksilver’s stock has lost 55% in the past year.

Another riser is Cliffs Natural Resources (CLF), which finished the first quarter as the biggest loser on the S&P 500, suffering a 51% decline in the first three months; Cliffs stock is up 3.5% premarket. As Dow Jones’ John Shipman writes, Cliffs received a boost this morning in a JPMorgan analyst note:

JPM calls CLF “an attractive buying opportunity following the unduly flamed fears in the key Great Lakes iron ore markets, signs of emerging stability in global seaborne prices, and an upcoming quarter supported by a strong 1Q13 average iron ore market where extremely negative sentiment (20% of the float is short) suggests merely meeting guidance will help re-link the shares to iron ore prices and potentially trigger positive earnings revisions.”

And here’s some reading on a so-far quiet Monday morning: Bloomberg looks at the recent move in the stock markets and tries to figure out if Wall Street has been caught by surprise or if investors are over-confident:

Bulls say the narrowing spread shows securities firms were caught off guard by the rally and that equities will climb as they boost predictions. Bears say the slowness of analysts to respond means stocks have gotten so far ahead of themselves that even market optimists are uncomfortable with the increase, which has added more than $10 trillion to values since 2009.

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Earnings reports, corporate strategies and analyst insights are all part of what moves stocks, and they’re all covered by the Stocks to Watch blog. We also look at macro issues, investor sentiments and hidden trends that are affecting the market. Stocks to Watch gives you the full picture of the U.S. stock markets, all day long.

The blog is written by Ben Levisohn, a former stock trader who has covered financial markets for the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and BusinessWeek.